Halted Memories
by Her Name Is Erika
Summary: He drank to forget because he didn’t want to remember, so in three days he just stopped… Chasecentric CZ


**A/N: New one shot. I was thinking about this in church of all places, and it'll be relatively short. It's mainly CZ. I have my sixth ML oneshot in the works, and a DL one, and both will debut next weekend. Anyway, enjoy this.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Zoey 101.**

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**Halted Memories**

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Three days ago, and it was still so fresh. Everything was. Her face implanted in his mind, her smile, the laugh he had grown accustomed to hearing since the beginning of eighth grade, roughly eight years ago. His little apartment was quiet, as he sat in the dark.

He felt numb, like things didn't matter anymore. His friends had tried to comfort him. Oh, how they tried, but they knew. They knew he would be shattered forever by her passing. Green eyes that were always lively and had that glimmer faded away into nothing, and they became void.

He picked himself up, partly intoxicated and picked up a framed picture of them.

Way back when they started dating the beginning of Junior Year, they smiled knowing they had each other. Just at the tender age of seventeen he was sure. So _fucking_ sure. He stared long and hard, trying to remember.

"Remembering hurts too damn much," he told himself bitterly, and swallowed another shot of tequila. He grimaced at the way the liquid burned his throat when it went down. "Remembering hurts…"

He grew frustrated, throwing the glass into the fire. The flames jumped up because of the alcohol, and would die down. At the young age of twenty-one, this fate was no stranger. His grandmother would leave him on their birthday, freshly sixteen. Never in a million years did he think the one that had comforted him would suffer the same fate five years later.

He took another gulp of the treasured alcohol.

"I have to drink to live with myself…" he whispered in the darkness, his words slightly slurred together. "…even though I don't want to live at all."

He just married her. Their wedding was a month ago. Last month, he was the happiest man alive…quite contrary to the case now. It was funny how one phone could shatter everything. He remembered that phone call from her younger brother against his own will.

"_Hello?" he said, answering the phone. _

"_Hey, Chase," the caller greeted grief-stricken. How could this have happened? It was a miracle he finally managed to get a hold of his brother-in-law. It took him five times to correctly dial the number because he was shaking so badly. _

"_Dustin, what's wrong? If it's a sibling thing, Zoey just left…she'll be back and I'll forward the message to her," he offered. Dustin gulped hard. _

"_Uh, Zoey isn't coming back," Dustin explained, his voice wavering and he sniffled. "Zoey just came to see me and she left. The hospital called me, so that's where I am right now."_

_Alarms went off in Chase's head, as panic rose in his chest. _

"_What happened?" he forced himself to ask. "…what are you doing at the hospital?"_

"_Just get here quickly," Dustin replied, trying not to cry as he snuck a glance at his sister's sheet covered body. He bit his bottom lip. "St. Peter's Medical Center."_

_Chase slammed the phone, and bolted out of the house._

_His car sped down the road, and the alarms going off in his head didn't seem to stop but get worse…_

_Dustin Brooks sighed, grabbing fistfuls of hair in utter frustration. It didn't seem fair. Zoey just came to see him at UCLA because he was a freshman there. In the blink of an eye, he was an only child. _

"_Dustin!"_

_He turned to see Chase, standing there, looking like he had run a marathon. Well, he had driven one but it was all the same. _

"_What happened?" the twenty-one year old asked the eighteen year college freshman urgently. _

"_Zoey was at UCLA with me…and she was leaving. I thought she was home already, but an hour later, the hospital called me," Chase watched Dustin's voice arch a higher note. "…they told me to come here because she was on the road when she—oh my God…"_

_Dustin seemed too disoriented to say anymore, so Chase went to a doctor, seeing if he could get the story from him instead. _

"_Um, hi. Excuse me," Chase said, politely despite his inward state. "…I was told my wife was here."_

_The elderly doctor eyed him, "What's her name?"_

"_Zoey Matthews. I'm Chase Matthews." _

"_Ah, yes," the doctor replied with recognition, and then grew sad. "Zoey has suffered some extreme trauma from a car accident she sustained. A drunk driver collided with her car quite roughly, and she sustained some serious head trauma…"_

"_How serious?" Chase questioned. He felt like throwing up, but kept it down._

"_Quite severe with some extensive brain damage and a severe concussion. I'm so sorry," the doctor said, with sympathy. The dreaded question came up, and Chase hoped with every part of his being that even though it was severe, Zoey would be okay. She would be fine, and she would recover. _

"_Will she be okay?"_

_The doctor sighed and shook his head sadly. _

"_Mr. Matthews. We did everything we could," the doctor noticed the young man's grief-stricken face. "We really did. We tried to keep her alive, but she slipped away. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Zoey's gone. I'm so sorry for your loss…"_

_After those two dreaded yours, nothing mattered anymore. He numbly walked into the room where her body lay. No, she wasn't dead. She wasn't gone. _

_Not Zoey._

_Not__** his**__ Zoey. _

_He pulled back the sheet, and she was so cold. A few cuts and bruises were splattered all over her face, and white bandages graced her head. Her lips usually a pale pink, were now a blue-ish colour from the lack of body heat. _

_He couldn't breathe. _

_He felt winded, as he slid down the wall. _

"_Chase?" a soft voice called, but sounded tearful. He looked up at the brunette, tears ready to fall, and his two male best friends with the help of Quinn comforted her grief-stricken brother. Dustin sobbed in Quinn's arms._

"_I just want my sister back!" they heard him wail in anguish, sobs racking his body. "I just want Zoey back…" _

"_What am I gonna do?" he asked her, quietly. Lola bit her bottom lip, sitting on the floor with him. She had seen the state of her best friend as well. "What am I going to do?"_

_She wrapped her arms around him. _

"_My wife is dead, Lola! What am I going to do?" he asked, as sobs racked his body. "What the hell…am I going to do?"_

Remembering just hurt too _fucking_ much, so he would end it.

He would just stop, because the pain was too raw, and just going back was like putting salt on an open, gaping wound. A tear rolled down his cheek, as he swaggered into the kitchen, pulling what he wanted.

He smiled a sad smile, lifting the object to his line of vision. He would take his last swig of alcohol ever and smash the glass against the porcelain floor. The shattered glass was made to match his heart, completely shattered and unable to be put back together.

"_There's a cupcake blocking my semicolon…"_

"_Happy, Happy birthday, today's your special day, here's your special cupcake, now blow the flame away," she sang. He looked up at her from the paper he was stressing over temporarily. _

"_Blow the flame away?" he asked, with a smile and a laugh. _

"_Just do it…"_

_He leaned over blowing the candle out. She looked at him expectantly. _

"_Did you make a wish?" she questioned. _

"_Yeah…that this beast of a paper would be over," he answered, exasperated…_

He would do _everything_ he could to stop remembering…

In the next fifteen seconds, he was deafened by a loud bang, and then silence.

He drank to forget because he didn't want to remember, so in three days he just stopped…

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**A/N: Review. This takes place when they're older (21). Just wanted to clear that up. **

**REVIEW!**

**-Erika **


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